hanging upside down from the rafters

Grand Unified Theory (part 1)

Would you believe me if I told you I was the first person to discover the underlying principles of story-writing and how it all fits together?

No?

Fair enough. You’re almost certainly right. After all, I’m just starting on this writing journey, and finer minds than mine have been wrestling with issues such as ‘what is story?’ and ‘character vs plot’ for yonks without coming to any agreement.

But I’m beginning to come to an understanding in my own mind of what story-writing means to me, how I do it, which bits I’m feeblest at… and as I’m thinking about it a lot as I read Weighty Tomes about the Craft of Writing and listen to Wise Words from Master Crafts(wo)men, I’ll update my theories and see if I get anywhere near something coherent in the end.

And if not, I’ll have fun doing it.

Constructing a story

This all started with the distinction between story, plot and structure described by our Writing for Radio teacher. Then we had the playwriting session with Kevin Fegan, and he gave us a fab way to generate a plot. Basically, you decide how many characters you want, who they are, then draw a character map…

Example Character Map

… which gives you lots of ideas for what the situation is, where the plot might take the characters, how the characters interact … and if you combine this with a theme (which for this example could be infidelity, or need) you’ve got a very good starting point.

Anyway, while Kevin was nattering about this, I found myself drawing a diagram something like:

Grand Unified Theory version 1

It had a bit less detail and a lot more scribbling out, but that was basically it, and even though I’ve been thinking about it for nearly a week it still makes sense. Note that this is very much the first version and I’m still thinking about it a lot, so there will doubtless be further elaboration and modification.

I’d better elaborate on what I mean by all the terms, I guess…

Theme – what the piece is about. Not the surface text, what the characters say and do, but the message you want to give to your audience that is revealed in the subtext. You need to know what this is. It may not emerge until you’ve written a first draft, or it may be the starting point for the whole exercise, but if you can’t state your theme in a sentence by the time you’ve finished, you haven’t done your job.

Characters – the people that inhabit your world. You need to know something about their background (not an exhaustive study, IMO), and, more importantly (again, IMO) you need to understand their motivations (hopes, fears, desires) and relationships with each other. Usually, one character will be the ‘main’ character.

Situation – what is happening that makes the journey necessary? What triggered the actions and conflict and change and chaos? What are the factors that limit the characters’ actions? Where is the story set, what is the social context?

Journey – what are the changes that happen in the main character’s life? Are these changes made by the character, or changes that happen to him/her? What are the start and end points of the journey?

I think all the above are vital elements that form the basis of the story, and they are likely to be in your head before you start trying to turn them into a coherent tale. They are by no means fixed, I’d be surprised if I wrote a piece and didn’t have to make substantial changes to at least two or three of these elements during the process. But they will always form the core of the story.

Story – this is the (explicit or implicit) summation of the four preceding elements, combined to make a coherent world. It includes backstory and other ‘off-stage; action that the audience may not be aware of.

Plot – the window on the world of the story that you plan to let your audience look through. This will usually be implicit, but it is important for you to be clear which parts of your world it is necessary or desirable for the audience to see.

Beginning – the state of the world at the start of the plot, before the onset of conflict that necessitates the journey.

Middle – the journey itself.

End – the resolution, the return to a stable state (unlikely to be the same as the beginning), the end of the journey.

Structure – the actual skeleton of the piece – a series of paragraphs or scenes to be fleshed out with words. This isn’t necessarily the same as beginning-middle-end, flashbacks and foreshadowing can be used to good effect.

Comments please!

Well, that’s the starting point. I’d be really interested to hear what anyone thinks about this. It is very much a work in progress, and I’m coming across relevant ideas and commentaries all the time. I’ve already got loads of things to follow up and elaborate on.

For example, one obvious drawback is the assumption of an Aristotelian structure of beginning/middle/end. I need to think about that one a bit more, I might just accept it as a limitation of the theory for now and see what happens…

Like this:

Related

One Response

[…] story. I think you need a reasonable handle on at least two of the four central elements of the Grand Unified Theory: theme, characters, situation, journey. If you’ve got it all straight, so much the better, […]